On this list, you will find films you know, as well as some you may not. The films are not ranked in any particular order. So, without further ado, here they are, the top 20 groundbreaking films of all time…

This one is a legendary blockbuster – Jaws. Made in 1975 in the United States and directed by Steven Spielberg, Jaws was the first modern blockbuster, according to Hagopian.

"Jaws together with Star Wars brought to an end the American Film Renaissance of 1968-1975, the most creative period in post-World War II American cinema. It’s a well-crafted film, but its success has drastically limited the intellectual diversity of the mainstream cinema," Hagopian says. If you want to get the theme stuck in your head, you can watch the official trailer for the movie on YouTube here.

Breathless (1960, Jean-Luc Godard, France): This French film influenced some of the biggest names in American cinema. Hagopian says, "This provocative, self-mocking, and stylish film helped to establish the French New Wave of the 1960s, and inspired a generation of young American filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola. Whatever postmodernism is, Breathless qualifies." Watch a clip of the movie here.

Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder, United States): Have you heard of film noir? Well, this is the movie that started it all.

"A brilliant and cynical film that initiated the film noir movement in the United States, and eventually around the world. As the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino would tell you, film noir, now called neo-noir, is alive and well as a way of portraying the sleazy, the greedy, and the crazy – and doing it in a visually striking way," Hagopian says.

Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper/Peter Fonda, United State): "This improvisational road movie was a self-styled countercultural essay—but perversely, it helped to turn the youth audience into a youth market whose influence continues to determine the way money and resources are allocated in the American film industry today," Hagopian says. You can watch the opening sequence of the movie here.

You probably recognize this image, but do you know what movie it's from? The image is a still from the film A Trip to the Moon. It is a French movie that was made in 1902 by George Melies. "George Melies’ epic fantasies first used the magical properties of cinema itself, such as stop action photography, to spin a new kind of magic that no other artistic medium could achieve," says Hagopian.

This 1902 classic's influence is still felt today. "As Martin Scorsese’s hero-worshiping film Hugo shows, Melies is truly the patron saint of modern special effects cinema. Every herd of jogging dinosaurs and exploding asteroids in the contemporary summer blockbuster is a wink at George Melies," Hagopian says. The movie is only about 10 minutes long. You can watch it here.

Another movie that influenced the industry for more than a century is D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which was made in the United States in 1915. In fact, Hagopian says it's "the single most influential film of all time."

The silent film was based on a novel and play called The Clansman by Thomas Dixon. The movie was banned in several cities and prompted outcry because of its portrayal of African American men, who were played by white actors in blackface.

Hagopian says The Birth of a Nation "transformed the American film business into a modern commercial media industry."

"The film was as socially influential as it was economically successful—an essential and horrific document in the history of American racism," says Hagopian. You can watch the film here.

Next on the list are two of the greatest "family" films of all time -- The Godfather I & II (1972, 1974, Francis Coppola, United State). "Coppola’s saga remains a primary experience for every film student, and by consensus one of the most acute and critical portraits of the American story of immigration, crime, and economic success in any medium," says Hagopian.

“The Great Train Robbery” (1903, Edwin S. Porter, United State): Even though it was made more than 110 years ago, this might be the perfect film for the attention-span challenged audiences of today – it's only 11 minutes long. Hagopian says the short narrative film is one of the earliest Westerns.

"(It) hastened the shift away from film as a brilliant novelty to a commodity, as film storytelling now took on a systematic aspect, a contract shared between filmmaker and viewer that’s still in force today," Hagopian said. You can watch the whole movie here pardner.

One of the most influential movies of all time was made in Pennsylvania. It was Night of the Living Dead (1958, George Romero, United States).

"Pennsylvania’s contribution to this list started as a no-budget, underground horror film -- whose popularity, in spite of its gore and the fact that it hardly ever played 'real' movie houses at normal times, inspired the entire modern American independent film movement," said Hagopian. Watch the whole movie here.

Primary (1960, Robert Drew, United State): "A media-savvy presidential candidate, John F. Kennedy, allowed a young documentarian, Robert Drew, unprecedented access to his campaign. Drew used new, lightweight cameras and sound equipment developed for television news. The campaign itself -- the 1960 Democratic primary in Wisconsin -- was forgettable, but the intimacy and `off-camera’ feel of celebrities letting down their guard has proved to be indelible," says Hagopian.

Perhaps you've heard of this one -- Star Wars (1977, George Lucas, United State): "Star Wars stitched together ideas taken from the films its director watched in USC film school to create a likeable and kinetic sci-fi/action film with an easily accessible and appealing philosophy, 'May the Force Be With You,' whatever that means," says Hagopian.

"Star Wars established a cornerstone of the blockbuster concept – 'the franchise film,' in which individual films, such as in the Die Hard, Iron Man, and Harry Potter franchises repeat the same ideas, less important as individual narratives than as the pretext for a vast commercial enterprise across many media platforms," says Hagopian.

If you're a fan of surreal and odd movies, you can give some thanks to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919, Robert Wiene, Germany). "This strange and strange-looking tale of a madman who controls a sleepwalking murderer looked like a fevered dream on screen. Its shadows and angles mocked the cinema’s privileged 'realism,'" Hagopian says.

"When the film was screened in the United States, its small but influential audiences saw that film design could be expressive of character’s inner states of being and knowing. The result was immediate: the American cinema developed a new creativity in art direction. Just ask modern surrealist filmmakers like Tim Burton and David Lynch about this film, and watch them nod and smile," says Hagopian. You can watch the movie here.

Nanook of the North (1922, Robert Flaherty, United States/France): Nanook of the North is considered the first, feature length documentary.

"From the first, the film had been used to document life but Flaherty’s picturesque account of the life of the 'primitive' Inuit hunter Nanook and his family showed that the documentary could also be a sentimental document as well -- turning Nanook into a compelling character even as it reduced the complexity of his culture and social existence," Hagopian says.

"Walt Disney’s The Living Desert, the recent March of the Penguins, and a thousand other romantic documentaries have taken their lead from Nanook of the North," says Hagopian.You can watch Nanook here.

While Nanook influenced documentaries, this movie influenced an entirely different type of moviemaking, pornography. Deep Throat was made in the United States in 1972 by Gerard Damiano. "This hugely successful film ignited the modern porn industry. Along with two other films of the era, Night of the Living Dead, and the pioneering Blaxploitation film SweetSweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). Deep Throat showed that Hollywood had totally failed to understand the idea of niche audiences, as well as their changing social attitudes and ways of moviegoing," Hagopian says. Sorry, no link to this one.

Rome: Open City (1945, Roberto Rossellini, Italy): "Filmed in the streets of Rome while Germans still occupied part of Italy, this deeply emotional tale of politics and betrayal immediately transformed world cinema. Rome: Open City added the term “neorealism” to the lexicon of directors seeking to go beyond the charm of studio-bound cinema to tell moral and ethical tales," said Hagopian. Please note, the photo is not from the film, but is an archival image of the actual German occupation in Rome.

"In the era of total war and potential nuclear obliteration the world needed all the moral and ethical help it could get, and the great postwar art cinema of directors like Satjayit Ray (India), Akira Kurosawa (Japan), Ingmar Bergman (Sweden), and Rossellini’s Italian countrymen Luchino Visconti, Vittorio DeSica, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Federico Fellini would provide it," says Hagopian. You can watch an analysis of Rome: Open City here.

The Battle of Algiers (1966, Gilo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria). "The great masterpiece of the political cinema, this mixture of documentary and fiction portrayed the Algerian independence movement against colonial France. Not only a thrilling narrative, but a compelling picture of the world in the wake of big-nation colonialism," Hagopian says.

"The film shows graphically that one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. Leaders of every independence movement since have watched this film as a primer. And US policymakers were said to have watched the film before the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan to learn its lessons (some of them may have skipped the screening)," says Hagopian. You can watch the movie in its entirety here.

Scorpio Rising (1964, Kenneth Anger, United State): "You’ve probably never seen it: the experimental film without which MTV style would never have been," Hagopian says. "The film features collage-style editing of images that often seem random, but by backing them with popular music, Anger gets the audience to do the conceptual work. Still disturbing and taboo-breaking after all these years." One more note about the movie – it has no dialogue. If you want to watch it – it can be viewed here.

Anyone who appreciates editing should watch The Battleship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisenstein, USSR): "Eisenstein’s revolutionary editing technique collided images in a torrent of conflict. For Eisenstein, notable as a theorist of the cinema as well as a director, movies occur in the spectator’s mind, not on the screen," says Hagopian.

"Eisenstein’s films of social tumult perfectly expressed the spirit of the new Soviet Union, but filmmakers all over the world have used his techniques to bring dynamism to their work and thrills to their audiences. Ironically, Walt Disney, a political conservative, was an early admirer of Eisenstein’s technique. Every montage sequence, as well as every political film made since, owes this master of the political cinema a great debt," says Hagopian. You can watch the movie here.

Within Our Gates (1919, Oscar Micheaux, United State): "An enormously influential film that relatively few people have ever seen, Within Our Gates established the African American cinema, in a film designed as a riposte to The Birth of a Nation," says Hagopian.

"Throughout the Jim Crow era, and for long after, African American filmmakers faced a hostile mainstream industry; against this wall of disinterest, Micheaux went on to make over 40 films before 1948, virtually all of them self-distributed," Hagopian says. You can watch Within Our Gates here.

The final film on this list is actual history -- "The Zapruder Film" (1963, Abraham Zapruder, United States). "Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas tailor, took his Model 414 PD Bell and Howell Zoomatic Director Series Camera 8mm camera to Dealey Plaza to film the Presidential motorcade on November 22, 1963. Zapruder's film not only captured history, it generated history," says Hagopian.

"(The film) is the most heavily-analyzed 26.6 seconds of film in history, creating supercharged debates about what, exactly, was shown in the film, and whether it may have been faked. The Zapruder film photographed the death of a president, but it also presaged the end of a naïve belief in film’s status as unmediated reality. Our Photoshopped skepticism in the unquestioned truth of the photographed image began with the Zapruder film," says Hagopian.

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